Author: Lisa Groen
Category: Devotional and prayer
Today after I went to Walmart, I took the freeway home and came up to a stop light as I was exiting from the freeway. This corner was less than one block from a friend’s home. He was married to a former roommate of mine from the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. That’s when I recognized him standing on the corner under the traffic light holding a sign that said: “Anything Helps, God Bless!”. When he saw me looking at him he pulled his mask over his mouth and pulled his hood tighter over his head. I had just hired him about 2 months ago for about an hour to move some large boxes of books, a shelf and end table out of my apartment which were a bit awkward for me to manage. He has been a most reliable friend for many years, and he actually loves to pray for people. I have no doubt that his faith is measured in the scales of heaven with favor and the Lord looks down upon him and smiles. This friend of mine serves in church and has basically taken on the role of butler to the pastor of his church. His faith is sincere and sweet, but he honestly has some misunderstandings of what it means to be his pastor’s “Armor Bearer”. He believes that his struggles on the job and loss of employment mean that there is more time to serve his pastor and believes that if he puts his pastor first and does everything the pastor wants him to within reason, then the Lord will count his faith as worthy of rewarding and will promote him with a better paid job because of sacrificing this way in how he “gives to the Lord”.
His own testimonies over the years have testified of his misunderstandings of the Holy Spirit. There have been at least 2 jobs that he has lost in the last 20 years from him falling down, rolling on the floor and laughing hysterically, because he said he got hit by the Holy Spirit with “Holy Laughter” and the people he worked for were not “sensitive to the Holy Spirit”. In addition to this there are at least 2 other jobs in which he got fired from his bosses not understanding why he laughs a bit too long, too hard, and too freely over jokes that are not really that funny. In fact, many of them are not funny at all. He truly acts like he thinks he is experiencing the Holy Spirit every time he laughs. This is why he gets fired, and this is why he struggles financially. My friend is living in the church building as the caretaker of the church he attends, and I am guessing he would be homeless if it were not for his subservience to his pastor. He may have had a short time being addicted to drugs, but that part of his past is more than 18 years old.
I really don’t want to open up a doctrinal can of worms or gravitate to mentioning the false teachings of Rodney Howard Browne, the original “Holy Ghost Bartender”. However, I do think that it is worth mentioning that the belief in many false teachings have cost numerous people a lot of jobs, relationships, and just the plain opportunities for having a “normal life”. In fact, the belief in false teachings have GIVEN numerous people a lot of jobs, relationships, and the unusual opportunities for having a “wealthy life”, up to the “King of The Hill”—even millionaire status. God forbid that and may our doctrine always be checked carefully!
While it is true that God has made us His peculiar people, he does not make us peculiar alone, as if “peculiar” was its own reference point to describe us without God choosing to leave his fingerprints on us. However, aside from being a peculiar people, what we all have in common with my friend, is that he and we are all “beggars– before the Living God.” I would remind us that everything we have received from God has always been a gift. We are the beneficiaries of God’s extensive benevolence. It will never be accredited to us as one who has “worked our way to heaven” or “earned a gift from God”. I came to a crisis point several years ago and I became keenly aware that every breath I took was because of the gracious mercy of God. Every beat of our hearts is a gift, every blink of our eyes is a gift, because we can move only by the mercy of God, every thought we can think is a gift, every drink of water, and on up from there. Each day we all literally experience thousands upon thousands of gifts from the benevolent mercy, kindness, and watchful eye of our Gracious Heavenly Father.
Let’s take some time to go through our homes and hearts, look around, and be thankful for what we have received, and been endowed with, with our abundance, and thank God as well for any lack we have, and also pray for those neighbors of ours who are less fortunate than we are. Paul said, “I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound.” It is for certain, that at some time in our lives we will have experienced both.
The links I have attached are of Steph Macleod, a professional singer/songwriter/worshipper from The United Kingdom. He has a testimony of living on the street due to alcoholism and got saved when he went to a shelter/mission for those living on the street. His song “Man In The Cold” is autobiographical for him and you will sense the heartbreak and loneliness in hearing his song. His song “When I found Jesus” is also autobiographical and is a real winner of a song capping off how his life was changed. I added it to complete the picture in his testimony and give poetic justice to say the least. It tells of the way Jesus found him in his utter brokenness and lifted him up from there. My friend who was holding the sign up today is another Jesus has lifted up quite a ways since I met him in 1989, but still needs prayer of course—then again, we ALL need prayer!
Prayer:
Our Gracious Heavenly Father, how easy it is for myself to quickly pray for many things in any one day and keep asking for more, and miss enjoying what you have already done. It is even a gift to be thankful, because we get to magnify your goodness in thinking through things one at a time and mention your name as the one who thought to bring that thing into our lives. How quickly and swiftly you move, like you were dancing through our prayer requests, and showing your glory, and goodness and your kindness. I thank you for what I have seen of You Oh God! How wonderful Lord it is to meditate upon the fact that you think my prayers are worthy of your consideration! And how even greater it is to think that when my prayers are not worthy of your consideration, you move to change my heart to provide for me opportunities to have my prayers become worthy of your consideration! Oh Lord, we bless your name for bearing with us in our brokenness, in our imperfections, in showing you are alive and living through us and blowing your wind through our lives. As cold as it’s been outside, You’re the One to warm the coldest heart! You’re the One to change the most stubborn of us all! How gracious you have been in letting us work, in giving us skills and talents, and gifts to share with the world, for granting us transportation and granting us food, clothing and shelter. Thank you that you grant us friends and family members to love us and talk to and share with, and people to “practice” our loving skills upon. Thank you that you have given us things to be involved with to do with others, to work towards, and people to serve, and songs to sing to you, truths to celebrate, meals to share with one another during holidays, and special times, and some get this opportunity every single day. We are blessed by your hand Oh God! And enriched in countless ways!
We pray for those who are less fortunate! We ask that you would be with them and help them. We ask that you would guide many out of false doctrines, and grant them stability, hope, an anchor for the soul, and grace to grow and learn, and move things out of their lives that they may have been tripping over. We ask you for your heart to warm those neighbors of ours who are out in the cold, just hoping that someone will give them an extra buck or two to make ends meet. We ask for their dignity to not be diminished, we pray that you would speak to them and to sharpen their sense of hearing. We pray you would help meet every need in their lives. We ask that they would lose all their taste for drugs, if that is the problem, and lose their taste for false doctrine if that has been something stealing from them. We ask that they would lose their taste for anything they have been tripping over, anything that gets them fired, anything that keeps them from being a good roommate, anything that keeps people from wanting to work along-side of them. Give them I pray, and us as well, a deep hunger and thirst for you Oh Lord! May you warm us to your love and mercy! May we exude our love and mercy for you in our praise and worship. May we lose our judgementalism for those out in the cold who are begging, maybe life has just gotten so confusing for them they don’t know what else to do. Give them the vision of themselves that you want them to see,–may they truly see themselves in their true spiritual condition—Lord in the light of you. Some are in you, and some are not, and we pray that those that are not would see your love, and mercy and goodness and that it would draw people to you for your kingdom. For those that belong to you, may they see their true spiritual condition in the light of you—we pray for eye salve! We ask for the light of your countenance to shine upon them and enlighten them! Help them all, the unsaved and the saved to overcome the battles they are now in—help them to see the hope they have in you! Renew their faith so they don’t give up and throw in the towel, or commit suicide. Give them hope so they don’t believe the lies they have stumbled over. Help them to overcome! Lord, please grant us as your people, and all our neighbors and spheres of influence to be moving toward you! May you help everyone to throw out whatever belongs to the sinful nature, and really do spiritual house cleaning, so that those who need to get saved will become saved, and so we will put on Christ and together be able to truly present ourselves and those we minister to for eternity in whatever way you have led us, to become “perfect, sanctified, stable, and whole” before you on the day that you return to take us home to be with you, Oh Lord, our God, King, and Gracious Heavenly Father! Amen! And Amen!
Man In The Cold (Live) | Steph Macleod https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6Uu7omVMes
When I Found Jesus (Live) | Steph Macleod https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTUV5G9gLsY
Keep growing in the Word! LG
groenintheword.blog 